Final Thoughts

I am working on other youth-focused projects that I hope SMU, CRU and I will be able to announce in the coming months. I am also always looking for input, suggestions and your ideas on those areas that are important to young people that we can cover in our newsletters, workshops and conferences. I am available at John@SteelMarketUpdate.com

Some observations from the Bank of America Merrill Lynch speaking engagement that I had in Chicago along with the interactions I had with those attending the Metals Industry Boy Scout Dinner. I sat with many service center executives who were lamenting about how their businesses have slowed, or not made expectations for first-quarter 2019 business. I remember one service center CEO telling me that the 3.5 percent GDP number didn’t make any sense based on their business levels and the exposure they have to a wide number of market segments. A second CEO told me their business was slowing and he was concerned as to how low prices could go from here. The reduction in optimism SMU has been measuring during our surveys and referenced above in our Sentiment article was evident in the room on Thursday evening. Not everyone was negative, there were a couple of companies whose businesses were doing well and who were optimistic about the future. They were in the minority of those with whom I spoke.

Of course, trading companies in attendance at the BSD were wondering how many traders would still be in business when the Section 232 tariffs finally come off…

Registrations for the 2019 SMU Steel Summit Conference are approaching 500 executives. We have companies like Carrier, Mestek, John Deere, Honda, Ryerson, Kloeckner, Reliance Steel & Aluminum, Nucor, SDI, ArcelorMittal, U.S. Steel, JSW, NLMK USA, AK Steel, Ternium and too many others to mention here. You can go to our website: www.SteelMarketUpdate.com/Events/Steel-Summit as we are trying to keep up on reporting new registrations once or twice a week on the site. Those companies referenced with an * mean there is more than one person coming from that company.

If you are having ANY ISSUES with registering, please send an email to Events@SteelMarketUpdate.com and someone will get back to you as soon as possible. You can also contact Brett Linton at 770-299-9877 or by email: Brett@SteelMarketUpdate.com and we will address the issue to make sure you get promptly registered.

The hotels are quickly filling up (our room blocks). Please be aware of this. We are trying to block more rooms, but the hotels are insisting on having a certain number of rooms available for their Marriott Rewards guests and others willing to pay the full hotel rate. We do not believe this will be an issue for the 2020 conference as there is at least one if not two new hotels being built in the Gateway Convention Center area. If you are not registered for the conference and have made a hotel reservation using our room block, you will be asked to remove the reservation from the block. We want to provide as many of our conference attendees access to reasonable room rates as possible.

I also want to remind people to come in early this year. The CME Group is conducting a Price Risk Management Workshop beginning at 10:30 a.m. until noon on Monday, Aug. 26. That workshop will be at the Marriott Gateway Hotel next to the convention center. That is the only program that will be held at the Marriott hotel. Everything else, including registration for the conference, will be at the Georgia International Convention Center (www.GICC.com). We will have a packed house for the conference, and we have made arrangements to encourage networking in the facility rather than having to leave the convention center. Our entire program, from beginning to end, is solid. We have great speakers and topics germane to your business (some new, some we’ve done before) all the way until the end when former presidential press ecretary and economic and political consultant Ari Fleischer will speak. He will be followed by an excellent program about banking and finance with Ira Kreft of Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Jim Tumulty, CEO of the Calibre Group, on how banks will look at lending practices based on the forecasts you will have received during the totality of the conference.

To register for the 2019 SMU Steel Summit Conference, click here or send an email to Events@SteelMarketUpdate.com and they will assist you.

A note about my travel schedule over the next couple of weeks: I will be in Iowa on Monday afternoon through Thursday early morning when I travel to Minnesota for Thursday and Friday. I will return to my office on Monday, May 20, only to leave the next day for Atlanta, returning to my office on Friday, May 24. The following week May 24-31 I am going to take some needed vacation time.

This week, Brett Linton will be covering for me during my absence: 770-299-9897 or Tim Triplett at 630-513-5916. You are welcome to send me emails and I will respond as quickly as I possibly can: John@SteelMarketUpdate.com. Paige Mayhair will be with me in Iowa on Monday through Wednesday, returning to her office on Thursday.

As always, your business is truly appreciated by all of us here at Steel Market Update.

John Packard, President & CEO